Focused On Your Business Virtual Office Blog

What I love most about being a Virtual Assistant is that I meet so many interesting people and some of the thought provoking lessons I learn on a daily basis are worth sharing with you.  To add some spice to this little blog of mine, I’ve decided to add some of these great teachers as guest bloggers - a big thank you to Steve Hartkopf of Aligned-Marketing for his contribution!

It’s Just a Matter of Time by Steve Hartkopf of Aligned-Marketing

Highly successful people understand how the past, the present and the future relate to their life, happiness and success – today and tomorrow!  

There’s an old saying: “Those who live in the past are destined to repeat it.” We’ve all met people that are trapped in the past. It’s either some idealized perfect-past, such as their childhood, or some dark-hole past they’re feverishly trying to escape, such as an ugly divorce. Wherever they go and whatever they do, nothing truly changes because they’re dragging an anchor (their past) behind them.

Some people, in contrast, are trapped in the present. What happened is yesterday’s news so why worry about it; tomorrow, as they say, is promised to no one. Their world is highly tactical. They have no time to reminisce and are incapable of seeing around the next corner and into the future. There’s nothing inherently wrong with their approach but, in my experience, life doesn’t deliver great things to our doorway just because we’re good people, we have to earn our success.

Then there are those who are driven by visions of the future, the dreamers. I enjoy being around these people because their world is full of possibilities, limitless. They’ve taken delayed gratification to an art-form and everything they do is about tomorrow. Each day is a quest. They will do wondrous things once they get organized and have time to truly get a round to it. For most, unfortunately, they never find their “round-to-it.” Maybe it’s in their garage?

These are extreme examples, of course, but the broader point of being a prisoner in one time frame is extremely limiting. If you want to be successful and enjoy the life you always imagined, you may need to work on understanding and expanding how you relate to the past, present, and future.

Most of the truly successful people I’ve known are able to transport themselves between each of these time references in a blink of an eye. They use the lessons of the past, both distant and recent, as a foundation to build their dreams for the future and understand that the linkage between the past and the future is today – the present. That’s how they maintain their sense of urgency, their energy, and their focus.

Want a better future? Remember: It’s Just a Matter of Time!

Every business has it’s own terminology.  It doesn’t matter what business we are in, eventually we’ll get so wrapped up in our business terminology that we forget that our customers come to us, because we are the experts in what we do and that they might not understand our jargon.

As business owners we also believe in what we sell 100% – why else would we want to be in business.  However, after being in business for a number of years, we have come so accustomed to our products and services that we might miss the obvious!  By the obvious, I mean the simple things that we might think are self-explanatory, but a consumer who doesn’t know about us, our products, our services might not be aware of. 

Take a fresh look at the information you share!  Take the “business owner” hat off and put on the “I’m a consumer looking for such and such a product or service” hat. 

• Is the information you share easy to understand?
• Are all the questions a consumer would have answered?
• Are all the benefits the consumer will receive spelled out?
• Does the consumer understand every detail that is included in your product or service?
• Would you buy from your business?

Working with a marketing consultant or a virtual assistant can combat that trap.  Having a new person (fresh approach) write our marketing materials, blogs, newsletters, website content (with our assistance) will assure that the material is easy to understand for the consumer and that “the obvious” isn’t missing.  Of course, we will have to do research to hire someone with excellent writing skills and the ability to pick up our terminology fast and then decipher it to make it enjoyable and easy to understand for the reader.

My passion is to receive the written word from my client and organizing it into online or offline documentation; a promotional piece, a flyer, a report, a proposal, a manual, forms, a newsletter, an ebook, a blog….. I enjoy making you look good!

Even though I offer many services, I’ve tried to narrow it down to what my true passion is.  Then one day a client emailed me after he received the promotional piece I created for him:  “A splendid organization of materials…” and that’s when it hit me!  That is my niche, that is my passion and that is what I love to do.  I’m always passionate about creating something exciting for my clients.  Time stands still for me when I work on organizing your materials into a nice looking document. 

Finding your true niche is half the battle.  Once you do, finding your target market and directing your marketing efforts correctly comes easy. What are you passionate about in your business and what are you doing to do more of it?

At times, Social Media seems to take over our lives.  As business owners, how can we ignore the benefits of social media?  It seems impossible.  At the same time, where will this phenomenon lead?

Some concerns to consider:

• The Race Across America (a bicycle race that starts on the West Coast and finishes on the East Coast) has started again.  My husband and his team crossed the United States three times in the past and have followed the race ever since.  This year is no different; well, at least he is trying.  Before social media, it was easy to follow the race on message boards dedicated to the race or the website, etc.  Now, every team, every rider, or team support person has their own way (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, individual blogs, etc.) to update their “friends” on the status of the race.  The drawback is that a follower cannot get a complete picture of the race.  Sure, it’s easy to follow each rider or team individually, but it is impossible to understand what is going on in the race overall.
• I just read an interesting article on the importance of content.  However, the aspect of building relationships through answering comments is often lost.  There doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to make sure you add value through your content while still investing time to answer comments and build relationships.
• The status updates come so frequently that an interesting discussion I’m following gets lost in the shuffle.  Today’s news is tomorrow’s past, I guess.

For someone like me, who prefers a one-on-one conversation over a room full of people, this is quite sad.  Meaningful discussions, conversations or helpful information gets lost too quickly. 

I wonder where we will be in 5, 10, 15 years from now.  Will our children still master the skill of listening and know how to conduct a meaningful conversation or will day-to-day conversations sound more like a bunch of status updates?

One of the biggest struggles business owners face is time management.  Time and time again, I hear that business owners find it very difficult to take time out.  Weekends, Holidays and vacations should be spent with family and friends.  It is a time to relax, recharge and to spend quality time with loved ones.

While this is said easily, it becomes very difficult for business owners to follow through.  We depend on our income; many business owners use the weekend to catch up on administrative tasks, social media strategies, blogging, and many other tasks that should be handled by an employee. 

I just had visitors in town and decided to take a week to myself to spend time with them.  Did I feel guilty?  Sure did!  However, my web presence didn’t change while I took time out.  All the prework was done before hand.  Checking my stats, I had the same amount of visitors as if I was working and the same amount of requests for information or work.  I now feel energized, refreshed and recharged and in a very short period of time, I accomplished more than I would have before.

Today’s technology allows for us, the business owners, to take time out.  Hiring a virtual assistant to handle some of the daily or weekly tasks does not have to cost a fortune, but will buy you time and peace of mind.

http://focusedonyourbusiness.com